Sugar gets a bad rap — and I say that as someone who has lived a low-sugar life for the past five years. Not because eating too much sweet stuff isn’t bad for you: it is. In fact, a high-sugar diet can have devastating consequences on a person’s health over time. But a bad rap because, over the last decade, white granulated sugar has become the pantomime villain of the healthy eating brigade. In its place, “natural” sweeteners such as honey, agave syrup and plant extracts such as stevia have often been touted as being in some way better for you.
But the truth is somewhat less palatable.
Both refined and unrefined sugars have much the same effect of the body. While refined table sugar (sucrose) is dealt with by the pancreas (which produces insulin), unrefined fruit sugars (fructose) are processed by the liver. Despite this biochemical difference, our bodies react to unrefined, natural sweeteners in much the same way as a spoonful of the white stuff — with a blood sugar spike.
This encourages the liver to produce glucose, and high blood glucose levels ultimately cause the body to store fat and gain weight.
Studies have shown that when eaten to excess, products containing fructose contribute to obesity, heart problems and liver disease just like products containing granulated sugar.
Other research has shown that fructose actually drains minerals from your body. And not for nothing are alternative sugars also implicated in weight gain and tooth decay; they also perpetuate your palette’s taste for sweet things — because many are actually sweeter than sugar. The theory is that consumers will therefore eat less of it — but who really does?
Recent statistics from the British Nutrition Foundation reveal that 96 per cent of people don’t know how much sweet stuff they should be consuming every day (for the record, the government recommends no more than 30g of added sugar a day, which is about seven teaspoons), but on average, most adults worldwide eat and drink double that.
So what’s the truth about “healthy” sugars?
Honey
A couple of years ago, sales of honey exceeded those of jam in supermarkets, a change attributed to a perception that honey makes for a healthier spread. Indeed, market research company Mintel estimated that honey sales totalled a staggering £112 million in 2013, meaning people ate their way through 20.3 million kilos. But is honey really better for us than white granulated sugar?
While honey is often thought of as a “natural” form of sugar, how much refining is done to the contents of the jars you find on the shelf at your local supermarket?
Certainly, the raw, unrefined varieties of honey available from farms and health food stores do contain some health-boosting trace minerals — niacin, riboflavin, thiamine and vitamin B6 — but those elements make up around two per cent of honey’s total content.
Hardly a viable source when you know that more than half of the product is pure fructose.
In terms of our blood sugar, because honey is 55 per cent fructose, it is in reality of little more benefit to our bodies than eating granulated sugar.
While honey is marginally lower on the glycaemic index (58) than sugar (65) — which means it is absorbed into the body at a slightly slower rate — the main difference between the two is in the image. Honey appears to be more natural.
Yet honey is also higher in calories than table sugar. A tablespoon of commercial natural honey contains 64 calories whereas a tablespoon of sugar contains around 48 calories.
Agave
A favourite sweetener of clean-eating bloggers, agave nectar is made from a fluid extracted from blue agave, a native Mexican plant that is also used to make tequila. The juice is filtered, heated and concentrated, meaning it is highly processed, and marketed as a “nectar”. While agave has a lower GI rating than honey (19), up to 90 per cent of it is fructose, and consuming it instead of sugar provides no major health benefits. It’s high in calories, too, at 60 per tablespoon.
Brown rice syrup
The latest foodstuff to be hailed by health bloggers as “nature’s sweetener”. Unlike honey and agave, brown rice syrup is fructose free. Unfortunately, it is 100 per cent glucose — 40 per cent higher than table sugar, so consumption leads to a massive blood sugar spike.
Additionally, it’s processed. Brown rice syrup is made from fermented cooked brown rice boiled into syrup that completely removes any nutrients, leaving behind only glucose. Not only is this empty calories (75 per tablespoon), but it’s also the highest scoring sweetener on the GI index (98).
Stevia
If you are looking for an alternative sweetener that doesn’t have a negative impact on the body’s blood sugar, try stevia, a new-generation sweetener made from the leaf of a plant, stevia rebaudiana, a South American herb 300 times sweeter than sugar. Containing no calories and having no effect on the blood sugar, it’s a great alternative to sugar, although by the spoonful many find its taste rather bitter.
However, some sugar manufacturers have recently begun formulating some of their granulated sugars with a proportion of stevia, meaning you get the sugary taste with a third of the calories.
Coconut sugar
Remember the health craze for cooking with coconut oil, rather than more traditional fats? Now coconut sugar is having a moment. Known by many names — including coconut palm sugar and coconut nectar — this has a low glycaemic index (around 35) and about 45 calories per tablespoon. Coconut sugar also appears to retain some nutrients found in the coconut palm itself — iron, zinc and potassium, as well as some antioxidants and a form of fibre that is thought to slow the sugar’s absorption into the bloodstream.
Molasses
A dense by-product of the sugar cane refining process, molasses contains quite a few vitamins and minerals — iron, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin B6 — and with a GI of about 55, it’s lower on the GI index than honey and granulated sugar. One tablespoon contains around 47 calories.
Maple syrup
A Nigella favourite — she likes to glug it over parsnips for roasting, and whisks it with mayonnaise to make a New Orleans slaw — the golden-brown stuff is made by extracting and then heating the sap of certain types of maple trees before filtration. Though rich in manganese and zinc, maple syrup is predominantly high in sucrose. It is slightly lower in calories than honey at about 52 per tablespoon, and scores around 54 on the glycaemic index.
–The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017
